Motley Moose – Archive

Can Sara Palin unite the Democratic Party? Yes she can! I have been trying to watch the Republican National Convention this week and really the only thing I could force myself to take in, whilst heavily medicated, was McCain’s speech. I did choose coffee and chocolate as the main part of my regimen, but I am still on pain killers, and taking one was a serious error.

John McCain’s speech was the most boring, annoying, and inadequate speech I have ever heard a nominee of either party give. The only thing that helped me remain awake, was the chatter on mydd and the green screen. I had visions of all of the things Colbert will do with that green screen, and it made me smile.

That was good, because I must say McCain’s biography and Fred Thompson’s introduction scared me to death. McCain was thankfully boring and not frightening. However I did get these horrible images of Fred Thompson, Joe Leiberman, and John McCain in the White House for the next four years, and had a very nasty zombie nightmare early this morning. I loves me some zombie movies, but perhaps I need to cut back.

I did not watch Palin as I was out Thursday night. I am not yet prepared, to subject myself to Mrs Palin. What I find odd, is that many of the people who tried to say that Obama or Clinton are not experienced or qualified to be POTUS, are giving Palin a total pass. I feel that John McCain’s choice of Sara Palin to be a terribly shameful objectification of women for the purpose of winning the White House. Sara Palin is the only person running on the national tickets that has not earned her spot. For the republicans to use the worst kind of tokenism is disgusting. Does McCain think he could not die? How does he really think a President Palin would do?

You have all read the diary about the note written by Anne K in Alaska, or seen other articles about it.  Anne lives in Wassilla, has known Sarah Palin for many years and has an experienced opinion of Gov. Palin’s history that she wanted to share.  She had asked that her thoughts be forwarded with her name attached – she did not want to hide from the responsibility of speaking her mind – though she asked that they not be posted on websites: “there are too many kooks out there…” (you know who you are… ;~).

Somewhere along the way someone posted the email in its entirety as a comment on the Washington Independent.  Since that moment, articles and diaries have popped up all over the web (and here’s another: curious critters, ain’t we?).

There has been discussion about this comment, some of it along the lines of: “Gee, I dunno, I think this may not be real…”  So instead of just bantering about the veracity of Anne’s words amongst those of us who were reading them second and fifth-hand, I decided to give Anne a call.

cross posted at MyDD

Well, as most of us know now, McCain did not fully vet Sarah Palin before he announced her as his VP pick.  We know this, because eight McCain staffers just arrived in Alaska to perform that function.

Can McCain retroactively vet Palin?  

Well sure! He can pretty much do anything that he damn well pleases, (well, except pick Lieberman for VP).  It’s pretty much like putting toothpaste back into the tube.  It’s extremely difficult, messy, and you can never get all of it back in, (my buddy and I tried this in college, and proved that you could get quite a bit back in, if you were very patient…and very bored).

Q&A with Palin on the issues in July 2006

Palin and “Femistists for Life” oppose Birth Control

The problem is that FFL doesn’t just oppose abortion. FFL wants abortion to be illegal. All abortions, period, including those for rape, incest, health, major fetal defects and, although Foster resisted admitting this, even some abortions most doctors would say were necessary to save the woman’s life. (Although FFL is not a Catholic organization, its rejection of therapeutic abortion follows Catholic doctrine.) FFL wants doctors who perform abortions to be punished, possibly with prison terms.

It was extremely difficult to get Foster to say what she thought would happen if abortion was banned. At one point she would not concede that women would continue to have abortions if it was recriminalized; at another she argued that criminalization was no big deal: Instructions on self-abortion were posted on the Internet. I had to work to get her to admit that illegal abortion was common before Roe, and that it was dangerous–numbers on abortion deaths were concocted by pre-Roe legalization advocates, she told me. Yet the FFL website prominently features gory stories of abortion mishaps and discredited claims that abortion causes breast cancer. (Challenged on the cancer connection, Foster says they just want women to have medical information. Asked why they don’t then link to the 2004 Lancet article debunking their cancer claims, she says they are not medical experts and have considered taking the cancer pages down.) So legal abortion is dangerous but illegal abortion would be safe? When I pointed out that in countries where the operation is banned, such as Brazil and Peru, rates are sky-high and abortion a major cause of injury and death, she professed ignorance.

I got similarly evasive answers when I asked why FFL didn’t promote birth control, and when I asked if FFL considered the pill an “abortifacient.” She did tell me that “birth control doesn’t work” for swing-shift nurses because they lose track of their body clock–interesting, if true–or for teenagers, which I know to be false.

Palin visits D.C., lobbies for Alaska issues Feb 25, 2008

Palin unqualified to serve as vice president

‘Creation science’ enters the race

GOVERNOR: Palin is only candidate to suggest it should be discussed in schools.

The GOP now has a VP candidate who thinks there are too many polar bears.  These furry mammals have made the egregious mistake of chosing to move to the area Ms. Palin and her oil buddies would like to start landcaping.

Fortunately, she won’t have to personally go shoot all of the remaining polar bears, since her oil friends are working on drowning them all.

Nine polar bears are at risk of drowning after the ice floe where they lived melted because of global warming, scientists have said.  The bears were spotted in open ocean off the northwest coast of Alaska, miles from their normal hunting area by US government oil survey scientists flying over the Chukchi sea.

Scientists who study the polar bear see this group of nine bears trying to swim 400 miles to safety as a bad sign.  In an area as vast as the unprecedentedly-large open waters of the Arctic, spotting one group this large and this lost means there are likely many others.

I was rather astonished this morning by McCain’s VP pick. I actually thought that he might pick a woman and Christine Todd Whitman or Condeleezza Rice seemed obvious choices. I suppose Palin is a better match with McCain. Whitman is probably a bit too liberal and I would have loved seeing the ads with Rice saying “bin Ladin determined to attack in America” over and over and over.

Pat Buchanin luvs him some Palen. You remember Pat Buchanin right?

The GOP and it’s leading spokespersons (well, Rush Limbaugh, but if it’s all you got…) are all ready to make a huge fuss over the stage at Denver’s Invesco Field.

Apparently there are columns in the backdrop.  Oh my.

What kind of hubris it would be to use columns in the background of a US electorial speech?  How assuming, how arrogant, gosh, how un-American can you get?!?

Here’s a sneak preview:

We Sure Are Going To Miss This Guy…